How Will A Strut Bar Help My Car?

[rob1005]

I was looking at different corollas and have noticed a lot of people have put in strut bars. Why do people put these in their cars? I'm thinking to strengthen the chasis but what else can this thing do for your car? Also, how much do they usually go for? I'm too lazy to check. :P

[CozmoNz]

without one your wheels are acting indipently, only thing that holds it together is the chassie itself and your antisway bar, well not really the bar

anyway, if you turn say a left corner, the left turns, and does a leverage sort of action, and pulls the right wheel around.. if you can think of it like that..

put a bar in that keeps it all strong, so when you turn left, it ALL goes left.. no pulling it around

in short, helps handeling :)

[Twincam.GTi]

It can also help in long term life of the car body Shell.

Due to the slight 'flexinig' of the front end of a car body shell/Mcpherson strut/suspension mount area over the years (due to the millions of twist'n'turns and millions of bumpy roads a car endures in it's life), this in turn helps rust take a hold due to melcular structure of metal weakening (Ford owners from the 60's and 70's will know what I mean).

A strut brace will help stop the flexing. Thus it will take longer for rust to take a 'hold' and rot your front suspension turret area out!

I will point out I am taking long term here 15 to 20 years.

If you do decide to fit a strut brace do make sure it does not catch against (or even stop access to) Brake reservoir or Air filter Housing etc.

[rob1005]

Ok thanks, one more thing though, do they make rear strut bars for corollas as well?

[exon16m]

if they are so useful why dont they fit them to standard cars... what are the disadvantages ?

[Twincam.GTi]

They do fit them as standard to some vehicles; the AE 92 Corolla GTi is on example.

However perhaps the manufacturers in general consider it a cost factor, although as I have said earlier,I believe all 'mcpherson strut' suspension cars should have it as standard because it helps prolong vehicle life.

[PaulT]

You might also find that on the modern cars, in order to comply with Euro-ncap crash ratings, the front

part of the car is pretty bombproof. Look at the new Corolla, Yaris and Avensis---those A-pillars are

pretty chunky.

Adding a strut may help, but you are getting diminishing returns if the car is quite solid already.

Cheers

Paul.

[Twincam.GTi]

With regard to the Euro-ncap crash testing you have a very good point.

You also say the front end of a modern car is quite solid, personnally I find my older 1989 GTi seems to be of 'thicker' metal than my newer 1998 Corolla. My own experiance has been that through the decades cars just get thiner and thiner.

The metal on my friends '58 Humber hawk is amazingly thick ...but i won't dwel on the fact about never having had seatbelts (not required by law ...pre '62) or the hard dashboard and steering wheel!

[PaulT]

I think it's not just the thickness of the sheet metal which creates the strength, it's also the design.

These days I don't think they have to crash cars any more to see what crumples, as computers are

powerful enough to model every element in the chassis, engine, suspension etc. and do a full finite

element analysis of an impact.

I would think that can speed up the strengthening/stiffening process a whole lot, so for a given

design cycle you would expect considerable advances to be made.

One of the uk motoring programmes crashed a 2004 Renault Espace and a 1994 Espace

50% head on at only 30mph and the old car was a real mess. Everybody would have just walked

away from the 2004 model, though.

Cheers

Paul.

[System~G]

Back to original topic for a second :)

Strut bracing is found as stock items on many performance cars or cars with larger engines offering more torque. But the majority of vehicle manufactured are not intended to be driven as if they were stolen.

Take for instance, two FWD AE92 chassis. A 1.6 GTi and a 1.3 GS. Compare the "Torque-Steer" of two. You will imediately see why the GTi has strut bracing fitted. The 1.3 just doesn't have enough power to justify the added expense of fitting them. Then again someone wanting a fast hatch wasn't goingt o buy a 1.3GS anyway :P

The engines of more powerful cars move a fair bit in the engine bay during heavy acceleration and gear changes. I'd imagine the strut braces help the chassis under this duress too.